Reel Toronto: Hannibal — Season Two

Toronto’s extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.

We’re going to be big about this and assume that Orphan Black and Hannibal weren’t so prominently snubbed at the Emmys just because they’re shot here. Probably the Americans are jealous, eh. The former, after all, features the ridiculously good acting of Tatiana Maslany and the latter is arguably one of the best-looking, most boundary-pushing shows on network television. Any way you slice it, our local TV shoots have come a long way from the likes of Relic Hunter.

The second season of Hannibal opens and closes with one of the ballsiest and bloodiest set pieces you’re likely to see on TV without having to click over to HBO and its ilk. It was a season we weren’t even sure was going to happen back when we profiled the last one, and we can now rest assured that a third season will allow the characters to continue their march toward the events of Red Dragon, and that showrunner Bryan Fuller will be able to continue to explore the “Cronenbergian vocabulary” of local locations.

And speaking of that first season, we should do a little housecleaning and repent for some sins of omission—there were some locations we missed not so much because of a lack of knowledge but thanks to just plain missing ’em. Here, for example, we see the handsome (okay, and dramatically lit) home in which Hannibal meets with his own therapist, played by Gillian Anderson.

At 8,200 square feet and 205 years old, it’s the biggest and oldest barn in the whole province, dontcha know! (Because it’s not on the Black Creek property, you can’t see it by visiting the village, but it’s been a part of Vaughan’s Doors Open program in the past.)

Arguably the series’ most stunning death tableau is this tree corpse, set up in a massive, fog-shrouded parking lot.